Pandora Opens vs Game Start

Whenever a player starts a game, if that player is going second, they get to start the game with explore. The reason for this is that going first is otherwise strictly better than going second. Without explore, the player who goes first gets more mana at every stage of the game than their opponent, because they get the 3 mana for turn first, due to taking the first turn. The explore card is an effective way of corrected the turn order imbalance.

With the creation of pandora, this turn order imbalance has reared its ugly head. In pandora, once the pandora is opened, players start their turns by gaining 6f instead of the usual 3f. This means that the player who draws the last shard, ends up effectively getting the same drawback that the player going second would get if the explore card did not exist. Thanks to pure RNG, their opponent gets a 3f advantage over them. This is obviously bad for the format. Fortunately, it ought to be pretty easy to correct using the same idea behind the explore card.

The player who draws the final shard should be given an immediate 2f, the same bonus given to the player going second in a normal game. If implimented, this would result in the player who opens the pandora being temporarily up 2f over their opponent, followed by the opponent being up 1f over them, and so on and so forth until the end of the game. What do you all think?

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I think it makes a lot of sense!
Will the player who open pandora get +2 Faeria right away, or on the start of her next turn? Because it seems a bit weird maybe if I use +Draw and open pandora and gain 2F by doing so :slight_smile: But maybe not? I dont know :slight_smile:

I’m not really sure about the timing. All I’m sure of is that the pandora opens mechanic is as imbalanced as going second was before the explore=+2f system. In order to balance pandora, a similar system needs to be implemented.

1 Like

Agreed :slight_smile:

…or Removed :rubyfish:

I agree too: the player who draws the final shard has a big disadvantage.
Another idea: a player receives 6f for the first time: his opponent receives an explore.

No need for an explore, just make it that the one who draws the last shard (and thus didn’'t get the 6f at the beginning of his turn) gets 2 extra faeria by drawing it, and you have the same equilibrium as the game beginning (well, or you could remove the 6f thing, but I guess that won’t be done any time soon)